The apocalypse is
beginning
Werewolves have come
to London, and subtly put their plans in motion. Their actions lost and
mistaken for a rampant increase in serial killing and a new deadly plague
taxing the resources of the city.
As people react to
the growing panic, the growing demand on emergency services - very few people
guess the truth and several people find themselves on the front line of the
upcoming war.
This book is a
dystopian development story, as we begin the eve of an apocalypse - this time
with werewolves rather than the more traditional zombies.
Which is a grossly
simplistic way to sum up this book. Like many of the good dystopians, this is
less about the specific creatures in question or even their evil so much as it
is a study of how society and people react to the slow collapse
Here we see a lot of
insights into growing fear, panic, vigilantism and prejudice as immigrant
groups in particular are scapegoated as is all too often common
One of the more unusual
elements of this book is the very large number of characters, most of whom
aren’t connected to each other in any real way (unless you count “living in
London” which is a pretty nebulous definition of connection given the size of
this city) but each of which have very different experiences, opinions and
viewpoints to the creeping disaster caused by the explosion of werewolf numbers
This also includes a
number of werewolf characters or characters who become werewolves, adding a
level of nuance to the big dangerous threat far more so than you’d get from,
say, zombies
It is interesting to
see such a wide range of characters each adapting to the horrors of the growing
werewolf encroachment, each of them reacting differently. My favourite and
chosen protagonist is Liz the policewoman who is determined to hold this
together, despite her criminally inclined father encroaching on her life and
her sudden adoption of a Romanian child. I like her and I’d love to follow her
story above all. There’s the reclusive agoraphobic woman, the father with
Alzheimer's she cares for and her sister - who uses sex to steal from wealthy
man while loving the thrill and risk of the whole thing (she’s also a character
I’d kind of love to see despite not loving her storyline so far). The Sikh boy
who forms an unlikely alliance with the boy bullying him as well as trying to
protect his sister along with upholding and thinking on Sikh values (perhaps a
little much for a young teen). The deeply religious Catholic gay teenager
facing a desperate moral and ethical battle over his sinfulness of being gay
and a murdering cannibal (and these being put kind of together is not… ideal,
even if the storyline and his relationship to a gay Black werewolf contains
more levels than this). A computer nerd who becomes an obsessive survivalist as
he’s the only one who sees the way it’s going. A biker gang. A woman who may be
a sociopath and her university professor. A Carribean nurse full of amazing
compassion…
